Magazine

December 2019

v.146 n.17

Article

Untempted by the Consequences

Philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe was fearless in argument. But she believed that ‘doing the truth’ was about much more than winning a debate.

By John Schwenkler

December 2, 2019

Philosophy

Bioethics

Contraception mandate

War and Peace

Women in the Church

Article

‘Trace of the Human’

A new show at the ICA in Boston addresses the global migration crisis by posing a simple question: what is a home? And why do more than 60 million people lack one?

November 29, 2019

Article

The Life You Lead

With ‘The Irishman’ Martin Scorsese returns to his familiar cinematic beat, where morality contends with the primal facts of time and mortality.

By Rand Richards Cooper

November 29, 2019

U.S. Catholicism

Movies

Spirituality

Article

Bridge Burners

Issues don’t make culture warriors. Rhetoric does. And their falsely ‘prophetic’ language has the chilling effect of shutting down debate.

November 28, 2019

Article

A Shooting Every Day

The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Remington Arms, putting a 2005 gun rights law at risk. Let the law fall soon, and let it be just the start.

November 25, 2019

Article

Preeminent?

The bishops’ insistence on abortion as the preeminent political issue reveals their resistance to Pope Francis’s call to serve the common good in all its complexity.

November 21, 2019

Article

Dry Bones

A new play about a reunion of four friends, all conservative Catholics, is quietly heroic. It reveals the limits of rhetoric as it probes the nature of suffering.

By Matthew Boudway

November 12, 2019

U.S. Catholicism

Secularism and Modernity

Fiction

Article

A Hermeneutic of Suspicion

Rather than pagan nature-worship, perhaps the statue of a pregnant woman suggests that the Amazonian people are bringing the seeds of the gospel to fruition.

November 4, 2019

Article

Exposing the Spirits

The synod on the Amazon will be remembered as the moment that bishops gathered in Rome asked the pope to ordain married men in order better to serve the poor.

By Austen Ivereigh

November 1, 2019

Pope Francis

Secularism and Modernity

Article

Rawls & Theodicy

Did liberalism originate in a kind of theodicy? And is there any reason to suppose that egalitarian liberalism is or has to be theological? Not necessarily.

By Samuel Moyn

October 30, 2019

Philosophy

Theology

Secularism and Modernity

Article

Behold the Child

Children may be weak, helpless, and needy, but they are not quiet: they demand the love that rightly belongs to them.

By Roberto J. De La Noval

December 25, 2019

Spirituality

Theology

The Last Word

Article

Poem | On the Feast of Stephen

Wasn’t it always his undying / Love first attracted us / And not that rogue star / Made followers?

By Stephen Rybicki

November 29, 2019

Poetry

Spirituality

Article

Do the world’s religions merely coexist as incommensurate fragments?

Letters | Better and worse nationalisms, fearing universal truths, etc.

By The Editors

November 29, 2019

Letters

Article

Christmas Critics

Art. Fiction. Memoir. Even a graphic novel. Our critics compile a list of their favorite readings from 2019. They make great gift ideas for the Christmas season.

By The Editors

November 29, 2019

Article

Somewhere in Between

Heaney’s legacy and his continued popularity as a lyric poet rest on the twelve volumes from which this selection is chosen. What makes his work so alluring?

By Micheal O’Siadhail

November 29, 2019

Poetry

Spirituality

Theology

Article

The Last Shakers?

The Shakers, who arrived in America in 1774, are a religious community facing extinction. Their decline means nothing less than the end of an idea of heaven.

November 28, 2019

Article

Rereading Havel

Thirty years ago, the Velvet Revolution marked the demise of Soviet control of Czechoslovakia. My enthusiasm for Vaclav Havel’s lucid writing continues to this day.

By Margaret O’Brien Steinfels

November 26, 2019

War and Peace

Secularism and Modernity

Foreign Affairs

Columnists

Article

Global Protests & Income Inequality

This year seems unusual, both for the number and scale of protests across the world. What links them is the growing demand for greater income equality.

By The Editors

November 21, 2019

Article

St. Ephrem’s Lament

The territory along the Syrian-Turkish border is the ancestral homeland of an ancient tradition of Aramaic-speaking Christianity. They’ve been betrayed before.

By Joseph Amar

November 19, 2019

Article

The Common Good or Capitalism?

Marco Rubio's economics nominally invoke Catholic social teaching, but conveniently ignore the parts that are inconsistent with his conservative record and rhetoric.

By John Gehring

November 15, 2019

Economy

Election 2020

Article

William Barr, Catholic Moralist

As evidenced by his Notre Dame speech, Barr’s understanding of Christianity is essentially Pelagian: his idea of Catholic ‘micro-morality’ ignores the social gospel.

By Paul Baumann

October 31, 2019

Secularism and Modernity